IX. AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration

CAConrad are American poet, professor and author of seven books. They have been working with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. Their latest books are Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (forthcoming, 2024) and AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (Wave Books, 2021). The Book of Frank is now available in nine different languages. Other titles include While Standing in Line for Death, ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tic for the Future Wilderness, and A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics. They received a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, a Lambda Literary Award, and a Believer Magazine Book Award. With Robert Dewhurst and Joshua Beckman, they co-edited Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners. In 2022 Augusto Cascales made a film of their play The Obituary Show. They recently had their first solo exhibition at Fluent Gallery in Santander, Spain, titled 13 Moons: Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return. They teach at Columbia University in New York City and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam.

miveHyvoKyHszQfcymFJSvLyf1YWZ7-metaY2FfY29ucmFkLlBORw==-

Introduction

„I have been working on an extensive (soma)tic poetry ritual that I call Resurrect Extinct Vibration. One of the ingredients of this ritual is that I lie on the ground and flood my body with recordings of recently extinct animals. In my lifetime, our planet has lost 60% of its wild creatures. When a species leaves the earth it takes all of its sounds with it: heartbeat, breath, footfall, gallop, wing flutter, purring, singing, crying, laughing, chewing, all of it gone forever. Humans are changing the sonic landscape, and the loss of our organic, wild vibration is part of that change. Another, newer ingredient to this ritual is to spend time in the vast abandoned, bankrupted shopping malls and other megastructures across America. My Instagram account is devoted to photos of weeds breaking through cement. This world is worth fighting for! We are not going to be able to reverse things to bring back the many plants, insects, birds, fish, mammals and other creatures that have become extinct in our lifetime, but we most certainly can stop or slow the haemorrhaging of our planet’s vitality. But to get everyone seeing what change is possible, we have to get everyone being creative in our lives. Only creative minds can imagine and then build that possible future we will need to survive. My job is not just to create, but to show others their abilities”.

In conversation with CAConrad, Interview by Josie Mitchell

GOLDEN IN THE MORNING CRANE OUR NECKS

ON ALL FOURS I AM A SEAT FOR THE WIND